


Long Nights

by teamchaosprez



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Anxiety, Gen, Insomnia, Light Angst, Paranoia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 17:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10813806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamchaosprez/pseuds/teamchaosprez
Summary: Some nights, Angela struggles to sleep. This is one of those nights.





	Long Nights

**Author's Note:**

> I am.... so attached to the idea of genji and angela being really good friends

1:13 in the morning for normal people, 0113 military time. Angela Ziegler couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t for a lack of trying, but a brief run in with the Reaper during a mission in King’s Row to save the lives of some innocent Omnic civilians had been enough to make it impossible for the combat medic to get any sort of rest. When she closed her eyes, she remembered the glare of seething hatred that had peered even through his mask, she remembered the numerous threats she had received in the time after she brought him back from the dead, she remembered all of her regrets from her time working with Overwatch and it kept her awake.

Even if she could sleep, she would probably have nightmares. Still, she laid in her cot, baby blue eyes trained up at a Pachimari sticker that Hana stuck up there just to prove that she could, listening to the quiet snoring of the others in the basement of the safehouse and trying to convince herself that she was safe, that everything was fine and exactly as it should be for the small and newly recalled Overwatch. Angela had memorized everyone’s breathing patterns so she could tell when anybody needed anything. She shared the basement with Lena, Fareeha, Genji, Zenyatta, Jesse, Hana, and Lucio, and although their snores overlapped each other (especially Lena’s), she could still work out who was who.

1:14. 1:15. 1:16. Everyone was breathing just fine. There was nothing wrong in the basement, and probably nothing wrong in the base, and she knew that she was safe; the old safehouse was pretty guarded and inconspicuous, but even if it wasn’t, she was surrounded by some of the best fighters in the world that could  _ probably _ make up for how vulnerable she was without her trusty Valkyrie suit and how hard a time she had trying to fight with her dinky pistol when she needed to resort to violence.

Angela knew that her paranoia was probably unreasonable and was mostly unfounded, but she couldn’t exactly push it down, and instead was having a staring contest with the blasted onion on the ceiling while occasionally glancing over at the blaring red light of the digital clock on the other side of the room. 1:17. 1:18. 1:19. She was getting desperate for sleep. She had to wake up at five in the morning to make sure that everyone else got up and got ready for the day.

1:20. 1:21. 1:22. The surgeon began running through the most boring surgeries she could, closing her eyes and turning over in her cot, pulling the scratchy blanket over her head to try and block out any light from the sparse windows and the clock that she could. Angela sighed heavily, curling in on herself slightly. The paranoia was starting to wear down in favor of just being exhausted. Insomnia, for her, was always  _ caused _ by stress, but consisted on its own, and though she knew that she had sleeping pills tucked away in the bottom of one of the bags she brought to London with her, she wanted to sleep on her own.

1:25. 1:26. 1:27. There was no point in just laying there; she wasn’t going to fall asleep like this, no matter how much she wanted to. Angela sighed deeply and pushed the blanket off of her body, rising to her feet and running a hand through her light blonde hair. She might as well go upstairs, check on Reinhardt, Jack, Torbjorn, Ana, Winston, Zarya, and Mei.  That would be more useful than laying in bed and struggling to do something she wouldn’t end up accomplishing.

The surgeon walked as quietly as she could across the basement and began climbing up the stairs to the ground floor, not noticing that one of the others in the room was just awake as she and was watching with concerned and curious eyes as she left. If she had, maybe she would have gotten back in bed and pretended that she was fine, but as it was she was content to move around in peace.

* * *

 

2:04. 2:05. 2:06. Everyone was doing just fine, so Angela had taken to wandering around the safehouse, ending up at a window in the living room. She looked out to the yellow lights of London, she watched the odd car speed past as the owner made their way home from some late shift or another. She watched a homeless man scurry into a hotel with an expression of ecstasy on his expression; he must have won some money for shelter for the night. She looked up to the sky, hoping to see stars through the light pollution but failing to see anything at all; she looked up to the Big Ben, watching the modernized clock tick. The statue of Mondatta that stood tall and proud was hardly visible considering the buildings that surrounded the square. Everything was peaceful in King’s Row for the moment.

It was a far cry from the unrest that tended to populate the city during the day. Perhaps it was the events of the early evening that had sombered people here; the underground Omnics were probably frightened by the fact that they had been very nearly blown up by Talon operatives, and the extremist groups that often terrorized them must have been upset that their plan hadn’t worked as well as they hoped. Angela didn’t know, and didn’t care to find out as long as nobody was injured.

2:08. 2:09. 2:10. She was beginning to get so tired that she didn’t even feel her own exhaustion anymore. Angela rubbed her face with her hands, and opted to walk around the house again, this time stepping over every person to make sure that they were sleeping peacefully and unharmed by any injury or illness; even though she knew that it was deeply unlikely that there was any change in anyone’s condition in the literal half an hour since the first time she did a walk around the safehouse, she at least wanted to try to put her mind at ease.

2:20. 2:21. 2:22. Nobody had changed, and the only movement came from Hana, who tossed and turned so much while she slept that Angela couldn’t help but wonder if she was even asleep at all. Nobody was sick, nobody was hurt, the safehouse hadn’t experienced a security breach, everything was fine - even Athena was generally silent, the surgeon assuming that she was getting rest unless she sensed an emergency was well. Everything was  _ silent. Too silent. _

God, the paranoia was coming back. Angela wished she could sleep.

In her wandering, the good doctor found her way to the kitchen, and internally she remembered her grandmother always telling her that she could get sleep if she had a glass of warm milk. Little recently orphaned Angela had always thought of that as a silly old tale, but thirty seven year old Angela was so desperate to get any sort of rest that she supposed it was worth a try, and so she grabbed a glass and a mug and got to attempt number five at finding some way to sleep.

* * *

3:34. 3:35. 3:36. The milk didn’t help.

Angela didn’t drink alcohol often, but this time around, she decided that it was a decent enough way to spend the time. A bottle of whiskey in, and she was drunker than she had been in probably years, curled up on the ground underneath the kitchen table that was too small to really suit the often crowded safehouse. She was holding her second bottle in the crook of her arm as though it was her newborn child, sitting with her legs pulled up to her chest and thinking as she stared at the cabinet across from her.

She took a swig, and thought about her failures. She thought about her regrets. She thought about how miserable Genji had been in the time immediately following her saving his life and how she had struggled to help him and ultimately failed; she thought about how Gabriel Reyes had disappeared off the face of the planet until he popped up again with the most terrifying of vendettas against her; she thought about those she failed to save. She thought about her failed attempts at being a peacemaker. She thought about how many opportunities she had probably given up by trying to hide her identity over several years.

The surgeon laughed for a moment, less because it was funny and more because her party of self pity was hysterically ironic and selfish. All she ever wanted was to help people at any cost, and how did that leave her? A paranoid, insomniac mess, sitting on the floor of some old kitchen in London drunk off her ass at 3:45 in the morning. Some  _ fucking _ good her advances in nanobiotic technology were doing her now. Some  _ fucking _ good her medical degree and sworn pacifism were bringing her.

“Angela?”

She was startled by the sound of her voice from in front of her, and jumped enough that the top of her head slammed against the bottom of the kitchen table. The woman in question let out a soft groan and rubbed the spot where she had hit, a grimace on her face, before she ducked slightly in order to see who was kneeling down at her level. It was Genji, his visor off and his eyes gentle and, honestly, worried. She couldn’t blame him. She would be worried if she saw her friend sloppy drunk this late, too.

The surgeon opened her mouth to try and say something smart and reassuring, like “Oh I’m fine I just needed a moment,” but she knew that he would never believe her in a million years. So instead of saying something intelligent Angela just burst into tears, covering her face with her knees as if she was trying to hide and blubbering out apologies for a million things; for not helping him as much as she could before he left Overwatch, for not tracking him down instead of just exchanging letters, for exactly this situation and for worrying him.

The cyborg just watched her for a while, as if he was unsure of what he could possibly do, but eventually he got down and crawled underneath the table to join her. He gently wrapped his arms around her, and Angela leaned on her friend; he gently rubbed her arm and let her just cry it out, and she was extremely grateful for his company. She felt less alone, more like she would eventually be fine and could act like nothing was wrong.

“Please don’t tell Fareeha I was crying,” she requested between hiccups as she slowly calmed down, wiping tears away from her cheeks with the back of her hand. She was still about as far from sober as she could be, but she was less upset now that she had gotten all of her pushed down emotions out; she was feeling much better with Genji there, still with an arm around her and helping her feel better.

“I won’t, as long as you don’t tell Zenyatta that I was awake at four in the morning,” Genji responded, and Angela was sure that he would be smiling if he were capable of it. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

He crawled out from underneath the table and reached a hand out to help her up. Angela abandoned her bottle of whiskey in favor of taking his hand and letting him move the arm that was around her shoulder to around her waist, letting him lead her out of the kitchen and back down to the basement, making sure that she didn’t stumble and fall over her own very drunk feet on the way there.

She practically collapsed onto her cot and, at long last, fell asleep.

The next morning, Genji convinced everyone else in the safehouse to let her sleep, and she woke up after noon - with a pounding headache, but more rested than she had felt in weeks. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!! comments would be appreciated <3


End file.
